Thursday, February 19, 2009

I'm beginning to think that this thing is going to run and run.

From Felix Salmon:

"
Stanford Ponzi Investigations: 22 Years Old

The WSJ says that "federal prosecutors are investigating whether Texas businessman R. Allen Stanford was operating a Ponzi scheme", even as Matt Goldstein reports that they've been doing that for 22 years:

One person who has known Stanford for nearly two decades, but declined to be identified, says as far back as 1987 FBI agents from Houston were looking into Stanford and his bank. This person says the FBI was looking into allegations of money laundering and that the CD business was a Ponzi scheme.

I'm beginning to think that this thing is going to run and run. The fact that the Feds still haven't managed to cobble together some basic wire-fraud charges is borderline incomprehensible."

Me:

Perhaps we should have a Manhattan Project to figure out how to determine when we're in the presence of a Ponzi Scheme. I suggest that we start by gathering together the people who've been working on Goldbach's Conjecture. Perhaps we could also have a contest: What is the earliest point in a Ponzi Scheme that it can be definitely determined to be a Ponzi Scheme? You can round off to the nearest decade.

No comments: